'Spec Ops: The Line' video game journeys to heart of madness

Spec Ops: The Line, out today, promises players a different type of combat game.

This new entrée from a decade-dormant franchise has been infused with the essence of a certain classic Francis Ford Coppola Vietnam War film.

Just don't expect actor Nolan North, who voices the main character Capt. Martin Walker, to play through the third-person shooter (on PS3, Xbox 3, $60; and PCs, $50; for ages 17-up) in its entirety.

That's because when it comes to actually playing video games North, who is perhaps best known for providing the voice -- and thanks to motion capture, the physical basis -- for Uncharted's Nathan Drake, just isn't much of a gamer himself.

"I'm just bad at it," he says. "I'm trying to get better. My 12-year-old has just recently got into a couple more games. We are going to attempt Portal. I love the developer Valve in Seattle. (North provided voices for some of the talking tech in Portal 2. ) It will be very, very interesting."

North and lead writer Walt Williams chatted with Game Hunters about Spec Ops: The Line, developed by the Berlin-based studio Yager and published by 2K Games, which like Rockstar Games is part of Take Two Interactive. "The last Spec Ops game was published about the time I was graduating from high school," says Williams, an employee of 2K Games who split his time between the Novato, Calif., headquarters and the Berlin developers. "While this is part of the Spec Ops franchise in name that is really the only connection to it. 2K and Take Two wanted to revitalize it with a complete reboot."

Walker, the game's protagonist, "is a completely different character" from Drake, North says. "He is a commander in the military special forces and he is going in to do a job and impossible situations are thrown in front of him. He just is doing the best that he can," he says. "It is a very different game from what I have done. I'm proud of it."

Walker and his small squad enter Dubai, which has been ravaged by massive sandstorms. They are searching for survivors and the 33rd Infantry, led by Col. John Konrad, last heard from about six months ago as a catastrophic storm hit.

"What you find is not only are there still people alive but they have turned on each other and the city is in the grips of the madness (of war)," Williams says. "Instead of leaving as you are supposed to do, you decide to go further and attempt to find Konrad and the 33rd, who you believe are victims of this situation, only to find that they are the oppressors and you get sucked into the madness of the conflict."

One of the early trailers had an 'Apocalypse Now' feel to it. And Konrad, I assume, is a nod to 'Heart of Darkness' author Joseph Conrad. Did that book and film influence the game?

Williams: Yes that was actually a nod. Absolutely, Heart of Darkness was one of things that did inspire us to do a military game that went a bit deeper than people have come to expect from military shooters. It was the inspiration more in trying to know what tone we wanted to go with the game versus trying to adapt it. It is definitely not an adaptation of Heart of Darkness or Apocalypse Now. Those stories are really about the unraveling of the Kurtz character and peeling back the layers of him. Whereas in our game Col. Konrad (is) really more just the catalyst that starts this journey and it is really about the soldiers -- Capt. Walker, Lt. Adams and Sgt. Lugo -- the journey they are going through and seeing what happens to these men as they are put in an increasingly bad situation and how they change and break.

We really wanted to play with the emotions and the mental space that one gets when they are put into a combat situation. That said, it is not designed to be a realistic situation, obviously the world has been hyper-realized. Because there is that physical situation between the player and the avatar in the world, so you sometimes have to make things a bit more extreme if you want to get these emotional feelings across. But with Walker in particular this is a man who has in his head a certain interpretation what a hero is and what a hero should do. Unfortunately, those expectations versus the reality of the situation are very different and those are going to begin to weigh on him and break him. That is really where the subtitle of the game, The Line, comes in. It's that line between expectation and reality, who we believe we are both as people and when we sit down to play a video game and who we actually are in reality and when we are playing these games.

North: It is not just a shooter. People who love first-person shooters and blowing things up and that kind of thing they are going to have a great time. It's good for that. But this game has a lot more of a psychological edge to it. You are also faced with these impossible choices that military personnel have to face sometimes. There is not always a right choice and wrong choice.

I think that's a gamble, too. Sometimes people are more comfortable making those kinds of decisions when they are against a monster or a zombie or they know they are in this fantastical world. This has so much grit to it. I think some people will find it, hopefully, entertainingly disturbing.

This character (Walker) is a military man through and through. He is probably the most realistic character I think I have played because he is just a soldier. He's not trying to be a hero. Has a mission he has been briefed on: 'This is what we are going to do.' And ultimately, he faces some real challenges. But he is not going to run into any zombies or monsters or anything like that. The only thing he does face is the demons in his own mind. That's going to be very interesting for players.

I am hoping there is going to be a lot of empathy for him. Ultimately I think he is a good character and reflects a lot of the good people we have in our military today.

Williams: Nolan brings a human quality to that character as he really begins to break down and tries to fight his own failure and stay up to that level of heroism and be the commander that he thinks he needs to be despite the fact that everything is continuing to fall apart around him. You can see him just shutting off parts of himself inside as he gets further and further inside of this game. Gamers are used to (characters voiced by) Nolan being a bit more cocky and funny. I think they are really going to be surprised with the performance that he brings to this game.

How were the voices recorded and was motion capture used?

Williams: Any time we were recording Walker and his squad mates they were actually recorded simultaneously in the same room. So the actors were always getting the chance to play off of each other and act off of each other. … We have military advisers -- special forces soldiers -- and they performed mo-cap for us. We wanted to keep the physical movements very authentic. They also went over the scripts and assisted when we had questions about certain procedures.

Why Dubai?

Williams: This is a city where men just came in and said, 'I don't care if there is nothing here and there shouldn't be a city here. I'm going to build whatever I want.' And the desert has kind of reclaimed and it proved their desire was nothing but hubris. Konrad comes in to save these people, thinking he can be the hero and, again, he is proven wrong. And now Walker is following in the footsteps of these people and believes that he can still do good despite all this evidence to the contrary.

Talk about the importance that sand plays in the game.

Williams: The sandstorms that have wrecked the city are going to continue to plague you throughout the game and control the way that you can move through the world, interact with your squad, interact with other characters and weapons you can use. You're never really going to know when those sandstorms are going to hit.

Sand has filled the buildings and vehicles and barricades have been built to keep sand out of areas. These are things you can use in a battle, to blow a barricade and have the sand pour an avalanche into the area possibly burying your enemies alive or stunning them – changing the environment to your advantage. Using grenades in a sandy area, a grenade is obviously going to kill the enemies that are closest to it, but if there is a lot of sand around it, it is going to blind and stun enemies that are a little further away. It's going to give you a chance to take out a larger group of enemies than a grenade would normally allow you to do.

This is a Mature-rated game. What are your thoughts about violence in video games?

North: I think it has its place. People use games, rock music, rap music, television and films basically as an excuse for their bad parenting, as far as I'm concerned. Kids are growing up at an exponential rate these days. That's fine and I don't want to sound like my grandfather. 'You know, back in my day.'

I take my job as a parent very seriously. My kids just played Uncharted. He is 12 and the 9-year-old watches. Not because it is too violent but they don't need to. They have been playing LEGO Star Wars and FIFA Soccer and that kind of stuff when they want to play a video game.

My third-grader came back and said his friends are playing Call of Duty Zombies. Why would you let your kids do that? I don't think it is going to ruin them, but there's no reason for that. There is a rating system that is put in place on purpose.

People say, ' Nathan Drake, he's so charming but he kills a lot of people in the game.' I think it is really important to point out in the narrative, the story, not multiplayer, Nathan Drake never kills anyone just for pleasure. The developer Naughty Dog is very careful not to do that. It's always a means to an end.

I didn't realize you voiced the Penguin in 'Batman: Arkham City'. What was that like?

North: When they approached me with that, they gave me the artwork and they wanted this kind of Cockney feel to it. I got to be so radically different from my voice. That was exciting because these were British developers (Rocksteady Studios) out of London and here I was getting to do those voices for them. It meant a lot that they trusted me with that accent and everything. I'm a complete Anglophile. I grew up watching Monty Python and Benny Hill and Fawlty Towers and all that kind of British television. It was very very cool.

So you haven't played an 'Uncharted' game all the way through?

North: When Nathan Drake dies that's what I would look like if I died. He falls a certain way and that is my scream. My kid will say, 'I'm sorry, I had to kill you 11 times to get through that level.' And my wife says, 'I don't know why, but that is disturbing.'

I think I have a good perspective on (the video game industry) because I am not completely caught up with it. I wrote that book Uncharted: Drake's Journal: Inside the Making of Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception. Researching that I really got to understand how these games are made. While I am not a gamer, I'm a huge fan of the gaming industry. I have the utmost respect for how these are made. The years of their life that they put into these properties coming to live is remarkable.

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About Mike Snider

Mike Snider began covering the video game industry during the Super Nintendo-Sega Genesis clash in 1992. An original pinball wizard, he eventually was seduced by Robotron: 2084 and Tempest. These days he is a fan of action/shooters and lives out his Keith Moon fantasies playing a mean drum kit on music games. More about Mike.

About Brett Molina

Brett Molina has been writing about video games for USA TODAY since 2005. He is well-versed in Madden NFL, the fighting genre and first-person shooters. The first video game he played was Asteroids at a local arcade. He has been hooked ever since. More about Brett.